Loss (18 page)

“Insanity is a disease of the mind. I know disease. My actions sprang from clarity of thought.” He lets fly, and once again, his aim is true: The second arrow splits the first, to land solidly in the ash’s trunk.

“So you chose to run away and pretend to be human.”

“Call it pretense if you must. My conscience is clear.”

“Only because your ego is outpaced by your ignorance!”

A surge of fury swells in him, filling him with fire. He turns his back on her. He’d saved the world, and this was his thanks? Being insulted by a sorry excuse of a Rider? Gnashing his teeth, he draws another arrow.

“Do you not even care about what is happening outside of your precious forest?” Her voice is heavy with scorn. “Or is sickness beyond you now?”

Words. They are just words. He takes a breath and takes aim at another tree.

“I have been watching. Listening. From Asia to Europe, the sickness is spreading.” A pause, and then: “It’s because of the fleas. They’re hungry. They cannot be sated, no matter how many times they bite their victims.”

Despite himself, he says, “Plague starts with fleas. It swells inside them, blocking their stomachs. When they bite a person, their sickness infects the open wound.”
Plague
, he thinks. Not just sickness, but plague. Something stirs in him, an uneasy bubbling in his stomach, and it takes him a moment to recognize it as guilt. Suddenly angry, he releases his arrow. It misses its target. He could blame it on an errant wind, but he knows better.

“I’ve seen this infection at work. People complain of a headache. Then they have trouble moving, either from feeling too hot or too cold. Some cannot hold down any food or drink.” She says this as if she is personally affronted by nausea and vomiting. “Then come the swellings on their necks, under their arms. On their inner thighs. I’ve watched those lumps grow to the size of oranges.”

Of course she would relate to the plague in terms of food. He feels her gaze boring into his back.

“Those boils turn black and split open and leak white liquid and blood.” A mirthless laugh, and then: “Black and white and red, intertwined. And it all leads to death.”

He growls, “Stop it.”

“I can’t. It’s not my demesne. You fled, and because of that, the plague now runs amok. Only you can rein it in.”

He squeezes his eyes closed. His fingers clench around his mortal bow, clench and release, as if they know it is not the proper weapon for him to wield. Beneath his hood, his brow itches.

And he bristles when he feels the weight of her hand on his shoulder.

“King White,” she says. “Please.”

His mouth twists in a snarl as he whirls to face her. This Famine wears a pointed black cap; beneath it, her plaited auburn hair frames the sides of her pale face. His eyes narrow as he looks at that cap, at those red braids. He thinks of a black beaded wig and of russet skies, and he shouts, “Do not dare! You may be the Black Rider, but you are not
she!”

“Nor am I trying to be,” she says quietly.

He glares at her, takes her in from her ridiculous black gown with its opulent buttons and frills to the lavishly decorated tight black coat trimmed with fur; he sneers at her pointed black shoes. Famine, practically dripping with abundance—it’s all but blasphemy. Through gritted teeth he says, “You have no right to use that name with me.”

“But I do,” she says, imploring. “The spirit of the Black Rider dwells within me, and through it I’ve seen how she—how
I
—used to be with you.”

The words sting him like wasps. “We were never together.”

“Not like that. But we were close, once.” Shadows play behind her eyes. “How I longed for you to leave your green exile and return. This has all been so . . . overwhelming.”

He doesn’t want to hear the pain in her voice. “Then tell the Pale Rider that you no longer accept his offer, and be done with the Black!”

“I almost did.” She lowers her head as if she cannot meet his gaze. “My predecessor died of heartbreak. I don’t know which was worse—trying to control the famine in northern Europe that sprang from her death, or coping with a loss that wasn’t mine but that I felt so completely.”

Heartbreak.

He thinks of cinnamon and sweet wine, and, deeper than that, of plums.

(Here.)

“Please,” says the woman in black. “Please return to us.”

Her appeal tears a laugh from his throat. It is a hollow sound, and its emptiness gives voice to his confusion and sorrow and determination. She has not seen what is to come. She doesn’t understand that he must stay in the Greenwood, stay there and never return.

(Here he’ll stay.)

“If not for the people dying from sickness,” she says, “then return for me.”

He cannot.

(Here he’ll stay, away from the world with its never-ending diseases and hunger and battles at every corner.)

He will not, not even for her, in her borrowed coat of black/

(And Billy suddenly understands.)

***

—and in the moment between the White Rider’s memories resetting, Billy finally understands what the White was trying to explain. He understands why there are layers of memories and sensations and experiences between him and the Ice Cream Man. And more than that, he knows where the Conqueror is hiding. He’s known from the start, but he hasn’t realized it until now.

And he knows what he has to do.

White beckons White.

He watches as the memory loops back, skipping past the Greenwood and beginning once more by the docks of Alexandria, where the Conqueror and Famine exchange a heated look. As the two Riders discuss poetry, Billy crouches down and sets himself like a sprinter poised to race. He tells himself he can do this, he’s got this. He tells himself he
can
.

Don’t be such a girl.

He grits his teeth.
Shut up
, he tells his subconscious, or whatever it is that insists on making him feel like a loser. He has a job to do. Death sent Billy for a reason.

“Whomsoever of men he has once seized he holds fast, and he is hateful even to the deathless gods!”

Billy swallows. Okay, yes, that Death—Death of centuries past—is way more frightening than the modern version that Billy knows. Maybe the Pale Rider has mellowed over the millennia. It doesn’t change the fact that Death tapped Billy to bring back the White Rider from the depths of memory—the one place that even Death cannot go.

White beckons White.

A thought nags at Billy, and it burrows into him like a worm through an apple. What if Death
doesn’t
think Billy can succeed? What if the only reason Death asked Billy to do this is because the Conqueror tricked Billy into becoming the next White Rider?

What if Billy isn’t the best option, but the
only
option?

. . .
such a girl
. . .

Billy Ballard, constantly picked last for any team. The kid who’s always pushed around.

Death’s cold voice, echoing from somewhere in the White:
The natural order is one of push and pull.

Billy feels himself starting to panic—that can’t-breathe, suffocating sensation that creeps up his chest and squeezes his throat and makes his head slam into overdrive. Who’s he kidding? He’s just a kid, a doormat, a punching bag. He’s just Billy Ballard, the wimp who can’t even fight back because he’s such a coward.

Shut up
, says Marianne.

And then, deeper than the panic, there’s a feeling of warmth, of comfort, centered in his chest, his heart. His soul. He feels it there, pulsing gently, soothing him with every beat of his heart. And in the middle of that feeling is a voice, a thought, a notion that was given to him by someone he misses so completely that he feels that loss in every waking moment.

(
Believe and stand tall.
)

He remembers his grandfather, back when he was a bear of a man. Gramps hoisting Billy high on his shoulders and running with him around the backyard fast enough for Billy to feel like he was flying.

The worm pauses.

Death again, from a memory that isn’t his own:
There are times when the ills of the living become too great to bear. And that’s when the Horsemen set it right.

Set it right.

Deep in the White, the Conqueror tells Famine to wait, and he asks her how long the darkened sun will reign. She opens her mouth to answer—

“She proved her point,” said Death.

“What point?”

“That you people are worth saving.”

Yes.
Yes.
For all that Death is upsetting and frightening, he also hasn’t lied—not to Mita, all those years ago, and not to Billy. Death told Billy that it’s a Horseman’s job to save the world. He wouldn’t have offered Billy up like some desperate sacrifice to an uncaring god.

(
Believe.
)

Death believes in Billy.

So does Marianne, for reasons Billy still can’t fathom. Maybe that’s just what friends do: They believe in you, no matter what.

And his mother believes in him—because really, she wouldn’t leave Gramps alone with Billy if she didn’t completely trust her son to watch over her father.

And Gramps—the Gramps of old, who sometimes winks through the doppelganger wearing his grandfather’s skin—Gramps believes in him.

The scene in the White shifts, and now the man pretending to be the human Robert Hode is shooting arrows at trees while the next incarnation of Famine is begging him to listen to her.

Billy nods, determined. Yes, he has people who believe in him. Time for him to make them proud.

Time for him to believe in himself.

And the worm turns.

Billy takes a deep breath and throws himself into the White—

***

—and with a defiant cry, he tackles the man disguised as a human forester—

***

—and the two of them flew in a tangle of limbs, the Conqueror screeching and Billy howling, wrapping himself around the man to keep him from escaping. They landed hard on the leaf-covered ground, rolling until they came to a halt. Billy held fast to the man’s arm.

“I’m Billy Ballard,” he said over the mad drumming of his heart. “And I’ve come to take you back.”

Chapter 17

As Billy Watched . . .

. . . the human guise bubbled away from the Conqueror’s face, leaving behind the twisted visage of the Ice Cream Man. His features were more horrifying than Billy remembered—the sunken, bloodshot eyes fixed on him, searing him with hatred, and both the ruined nose and lipless mouth were nearly lost within lumpy, pockmarked skin—but surprisingly, Billy found that he was no longer frightened by what he saw. Maybe years of nightmares had inoculated him from the melted-wax horror that was the White Rider’s face.

“No!” Spittle flew from the Conqueror’s mouth, and it sizzled in the air. “No! No no no no NO!” He yanked his arm, but Billy had dug in like a tick. The White Rider’s eyes flashed, hot and violent, and he bellowed his denial, his desperation, his utter fury:
“NO!”

Billy felt sickness hit him dead on, slamming into his body and rolling over him like a tempestuous wave. Not just any sickness but a
calamity
of sicknesses, all pounding him and pushing through his defenses until his immune system was left tattered and wheezing. His muscles constricted and his brain caught fire; his stomach rebelled and his bowels knotted and his heart stuttered. His skin bumped with chill; his flesh cooked with heat. He opened his mouth to scream and vomit erupted. His limbs jerking, he collapsed to the ground. He barely felt the White Rider pull out of his grip.

There on the forest floor, Billy Ballard began to die.

Please
, he thought despairingly. Not
no
, not
stop
, not some primeval war cry that voiced his rage, but
please
. After years of just taking it whenever Eddie Glass or any of the other bullies hurt him, Billy didn’t know how to fight back.

The answer came to him in a small, still voice:
Focus.

He closed his eyes and focused. And two things suddenly became clear.

One: He
did
know how to fight back. He had, earlier today, when Eddie had gotten in his face one time too many. And again, when Kurt and Joe had embarrassed him in the cafeteria. He’d done it. He’d gotten pushed and he’d pushed back, hard.

Two: As real as everything seemed right now, he was in a memory.

Perhaps in counterpoint, his stomach twisted and he vomited a second time. Sweat beaded on his forehead and then evaporated as his body tried to regulate its fluctuating temperature.

Memory or not, disease was eating away at him. Destroying him. He even knew what the ingredients were in the cocktail of contagions: influenza and pneumonia and Ebola. Maybe that knowledge was the White Rider in him. A definite plus when taking biology exams, but not so great at practical applications of that knowledge. He would have laughed if he hadn’t been struggling for breath.

Again, a gentle nudge, asking him to do one thing:
Focus.

All right, focusing.
He was in a forest, or the memory of a forest, even though he himself had never been in such a place. He knew other places far better—the pizzeria, where he’d sit with Marianne and watch her oregano her slice to death; the sanctuary of his room, with its posters and music and a door that locked; the booby-trapped hallways of school, filled with people who enjoyed hurting him for no better reason than it was easy to hurt him and with teachers whose eyes were on only their lesson plans . . .

And then, a question from his bio quiz—the one he hadn’t needed to study for, because he’d magically known the answers—floated to the front of his mind:

How many leucocytes are in a drop of blood?

Answer: Anywhere from 7,000 to 25,000

Now Billy could hear his biology teacher’s nasal whine as he went on and on about
lymphocytes
and
neutrophils
, and how
macrophages phagocytized pathogens
. Or, as he’d loosely translated to Marianne the other week when they’d been doing homework together: When a disease invaded the body, the white blood cells attacked.